The Daily Mail leads today with the news that the government has finally declared class warfare on the Middle classes: a delicious, blonde 18-year-old with three A-Level As, whose interests are world peace and nudism (oh all right, I made the last bit up) has been turned down for Bristol University because she went to a private school. Cue double-page spread of other photogenic young people who have failed to get into the university of their choice; cuel also the Wrath of Heffer. ( I won’t mention the fact that applying for Bristol when you might, on the face of it, get into Oxbridge, suggests you’re not going to benefit much from a university education.)
The Guardian, as often, has another angle. But you have to ask which article will do more to inflame the scornful anger of the middle classes. A reporter took a striking fireman and his wife to the restaurant where Andy Gilchrist, the firemen’s union leader last month spent
Has this got anything to do with Euan Blair going to Bristol? On the face of it I can’t see why, and I’m going through one of my tortured liberal phases where even touching the D**ly fucking M**l brings me out in a rash of hypertension and self-righteousness, but it seems a bit of a coincidence.
R
I don’t think it does. It has something to do with Bristol’s stated admissions policy, and a lot more to do with the utter devaluation of A levels, so that 20% of those who take them now get A grades, which means that good universities have to find other ways to sift out the 2 or 3% who should be at elite universities.
A real old grumpy conservative writes.